Today’s reading passage comes from a short illustrated novel cherished worldwide by children and adults alike, The Little Prince, by the famous French aviator and author, Antoine De Saint-Exupery.  The narrator of the story is an airplane pilot who is forced to make an emergency landing in, of all places, the Sahara Desert.  His plane is badly damaged, and he has almost no food or water.  Frightened and very tired, the pilot falls asleep, only to be awakened the next morning by a serious-looking little boy with a funny little voice who has a weird request for him:  “Please,” the mysterious stranger says, “draw me a sheep.” In this lesson’s reading, the surprised pilot/narrator tells us how he reacts to the request.  The Little Prince is what is known as a fable—a story that has a strong moral message for its readers.  It turns out that the little boy is an alien visitor from a tiny asteroid named B612.  Eventually, he takes the pilot on a journey that teaches him the meaning of life:  “It is only with the heart that a person can see the truth,” the visitor tells the pilot. “What is most important cannot be seen with the eye.”

As in all of the readings in Passages, Lesson 16’s passage offers a broad range of excellent words that you can use to make your own writing clearer, more vigorous, and more interesting.  In today’s wordcast, we will examine seven nouns from the reading that have all kinds of meanings and uses.   Next week, we will look at eight more great words of different parts of speech.

To listen to a recording of this passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.  

Today we will be looking at five very useful verbs from KA’s reader, Passages, Lesson15.   In today’s reading passage from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a miracle has taken place.  Scrooge has seen the error of his ways.  The ghost of Christmas Past has shown him how and why he has become such a greedy, hateful man.  Through the Ghost of Christmas Present, he has seen the true meaning of the holiday season.  And the Ghost of Christmas Future has shown him the sad end that awaits him – if he doesn’t change.  But Scrooge does change.  He becomes a new man, one who cares about and loves and respects his fellow human beings.  Now it is the day after Christmas.  Scrooge is in his office waiting for his employee, Bob Cratchit, to come in.  Scrooge, as you can imagine, has been the world’s worst boss.  He has overworked and underpaid Bob, forcing him to work in terrible conditions in a cramped space called the Tank.  But Bob has a large family to support, including a disabled son named Tiny Tim, and has no choice but to put up with Scrooge.  But when Bob arrives at work … well, let’s see what happens.

Last week, in Passages Lesson 15, Part 1, we looked at seven useful adjectives and nouns from the reading passage.  Today, we will go over five useful verbs that you can use in your own writing.

To listen to a recording of this passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.

A Christmas Carol is now available as a Well Read Audio Book on the ESL Publishing website.  Well Read offers a selection of classic stories by great authors read at a relaxed, easy-listening pace.  Each story comes with a downloadable, fully annotated, absolutely free eBook.  If you would like to listen to Well Read’s specially prepared rendition of this timeless Christmas tale (and just in time for the holidays!), please follow the link to the ESL Publishing website.  

Today we will be looking at seven terrific words from Passages, Lesson 15.   In today’s reading passage from “A Christmas Carol,” a true miracle has taken place.  Scrooge has seen the error of his ways.  The ghost of Christmas Past has shown him how he had become such a greedy, hateful, cruel man.  Through the Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge has seen the true meaning of the holiday season.  And the Ghost of Christmas Future shows him the sad end that awaits him – if he doesn’t change.  But Scrooge does change.  Literally overnight becomes a new man, one who cares about and loves and respects his fellow human beings.  Now it is the day after Christmas.  Scrooge is in his office waiting for his employee, Bob Cratchit, to come in.  Scrooge, as you can imagine, has up to now been the world’s worst boss.  He has overworked and underpaid Bob, forcing him to toil away in terrible conditions in a cramped space called “the Tank.” But poor Bob has a large family to support, including a disabled son named Tiny Tim, and he has no choice but to put up with Scrooge.  So when Bob arrives at “the Tank” today, he has a big surprise in store for him.

As with all of Dickens’ works, his short stories like “A Christmas Carol” include all kinds of great words that you can use in your own writing.  Today, we will look at seven adjectives and nouns from the reading passage.  Next week, in Passages, Lesson 15, Part 2, we will work on several excellent verbs from the same reading. 

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.

The Christmas spirit continues this week with nine more useful and powerful words from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  In this week’s reading passage, from Passages, Lesson 14, our bitter old protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, and the first of his three mysterious visitors, the Ghost of Christmas Past, travel back to a time and place that Scrooge knew well as a young boy.  In one of the most moving and memorable lines in all of English literature, Scrooge chokes out “I was a boy here” as he looks out over the familiar landscape of his childhood.   In this scene, readers get a glimpse of a softer side to Scrooge, one even he had long forgotten he had, and a hint of the magical transformation that will soon happen to him, a change that for Dickens symbolized the change the whole world would need to undergo to become a happier, fairer, more peaceful place.

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune into the KA Voicecast website. 

A Christmas Carol is now available as a Well Read Audio Book on the ESL Publishing website.  Well Read offers a selection of classic stories by great authors read at a relaxed, easy-listening pace.  Each story comes with a downloadable, fully annotated, absolutely free eBook.  If you would like to listen to Well Read’s specially prepared rendition of this timeless Christmas tale (and just in time for the holidays!), please follow the link to the ESL Publishing website.  

Here’s an early Christmas present for you.  The reading passages for this and the next lesson come from the most beloved Christmas—and ghost—story ever told, “A Christmas Carol,” by the great English novelist, Charles Dickens (1812-1870).  The story first came out in a London magazine in November and December of 1843.  Since then, “A Christmas Carol” has become an annual Christmas tradition, whether it is read out loud or enjoyed in solitude, performed on the professional or school stage, or seen in its many movie and TV adaptations.  The central character is Ebenezer Scrooge, a stingy, cranky, bitter old businessman who hates people, life, and, most of all, Christmas.  But one Christmas Eve, something happens.  Scrooge is visited by three spirits—the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future—who show him the true meaning of Christmas.  In today’s reading, the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Ebenezer back to a scene from his childhood, where Scrooge is already a lonely and unhappy little boy.

Charles Dickens is a master of prose, and his work is filled with lots of great words for you to study and use in your own writing.  In today’s lesson, we will look at nine useful verbs from the passage.  We will examine nine more words in KA Wordcast Passages, Lesson 14, Part 2. 

To listen to a recording of this passage, tune in to the KA Voicecast website. 

Today, we will be looking at eleven words from KA’s reader Passages, Lesson 13.  As mentioned in the previous lesson, The Wizard of Earthsea is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story where the protagonist must pass a series of tests in which he or she has to fight not only outside dangers but inner demons as well.  Our hero Ged is no exception.  He is young, arrogant, and, most of all, reckless.  After leaving Roke Knoll, the school for wizards, Ged vows to get revenge on his rival classmate, Jasper, and uses his newly mastered powers to get a magical spirit to help him.  But this is a big mistake, because along with this spirit appears a terrible dark shadow that threatens to destroy the land of Earthsea.  To save himself and Earthsea, Ged must set out to find and destroy this nameless evil presence.  In today’s reading passage, Ged is in a boat on the Sea of Gont when the shadow looms up out of nowhere to challenge him.

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.

As we learned in our last wordcast, A Wizard of Earthsea is a classic science-fiction/fantasy novel by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin.  A Wizard of Earthsea is the first in a series of books about a legendary sorcerer and warrior named Ged, known in his youth as Sparrowhawk.   In his hunger for knowledge and power, the often reckless Sparrowhawk tampers with some time-honored Earthsea secrets, letting loose a frightful shadow upon the world.  A Wizard of Earthsea is the tumultuous story of how a repentant Sparrowhawk, in his quest to restore the balance that he himself has so foolishly upset, learns the mighty words of power, explores Earthsea’s mysterious waterways, tames an ancient dragon, and faces death time and again.  Several of the Earthsea stories have been made into movies or TV series, by the way.  But Ursula K. Le Guin has not been pleased with any of them, complaining that they fail to honor the originals and distort her vision.  So, says Sparrowhawk’s creator, if you want to know the truth about the Land of Earthsea and the people who inhabit it, read the books!  Sounds like a plan.

 The passage (in fact any passage) from A Wizard of Earthsea offers readers a wealth of fantastic words. In Passages Lesson 12: Part 1, we looked at eleven very useful verbs.  Today, in Part 2, we will examine nine nouns and adjectives that should be a part of everyone’s active English vocabulary.

 To listen to a recording of this passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website. 

A Wizard of Earthsea, the short novel from which the passages for Lessons 12 and 13 are taken, is an acknowledged classic of science fiction and fantasy.  It was written by Ursula K. Le Guin, who was born in 1929 and is an esteemed American poet, novelist, essayist, and short-story writer.  A Wizard of Earthsea is the first in a series of five books that follow the adventures of a young wizard named Ged, also known as Sparrowhawk.  The series is often compared to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia.  (And if you’re a fan of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, you’ll love Le Guin’s series.)  A Wizard of Earthsea is what is known in literature as a “bildungsroman.”  This is a German word for a story where the young hero overcomes many difficulties and challenges to become a better, stronger person and to achieve his or her true destiny.  In the reading for this lesson, Ged takes his first big step in this growing-up process.  He starts taking classes in wizardry at a school called Roke Knoll.   

The reading passage is jam-packed with some really great words, which we will examine over the next two Wordcasts.  In Passages Lesson 12: Part ONE, we’ll look at eleven verbs that will come in handy in your own writing.

To listen to a recording of this passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website. 

Today we will be looking at eleven words from Lesson Eleven of KA’s reader, Passages.  The words are found in the first few pages of one of the most famous and most haunting stories in American fiction, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson.  When the story came out in the New Yorker, on June 26, 1948, thousands of readers telephoned in and wrote letters to the magazine expressing their disgust and confusion.  “The Lottery” is set in a typical American small town.  The action takes place on a warm day in June, the day of the town’s annual lottery festival.  The story starts out simply enough, with families slowly gathering in the town square and everyone making preparations for the day’s big event.  Some boys “create a great pile of stones in one corner of the square.”  What are the stones for? And what do they have to do with the lottery?  The answers to these questions are only revealed in the story’s shocking ending.  And shock her readers is exactly what Shirley Jackson set out to do.  She called her story a “graphic dramatization” of man’s natural potential for violence and cruelty.  

The nine words for this lesson were taken from a passage from one of the most beloved short stories ever written in English, “The Garden Party,” by Katherine Mansfield.  Mansfield was born in New Zealand in 1888 into a wealthy, upper-class family.  She attended university in London, England, where she began writing fiction.  Much of Mansfield’s work is autobiographical, based on her early years in New Zealand.  “The Garden Party” was published in 1922.  The plot is simple: it is mid-morning, and the Sheridans, a socially prominent New Zealand family, are making preparations for a big party to be held in their garden that afternoon.  All the Sheridans, but especially sisters Laura and Jose, are greatly looking forward to it.  But then something terrible happens.  In today’s passage, which, because it is mostly dialogue, is a little longer than previous ones, we learn what happens and how the characters react to it. 

To listen to a recording of this passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.